Study Tips

Latin Bible. You will find here some stories
from the Latin Bible. You can find the complete text of the Latin Bible
online at many websites. An English translation based on the Latin Bible,
the Douay-Rheims version, is available in a very user-friendly format for
browsing and reading at ScripTours.
If you would like to view the text of the Latin Bible, side by side with
English translation(s), use the "Power Search" option at the Unbound
Bible website.

How hard is Biblical Latin? Biblical Latin
is not hard to read! That is why these stories are great for beginning Latin
students. After you have completed a basic Latin course, you should not have
any trouble reading the Latin Bible. The Latin of the Bible is highly influenced
by oral storyelling traditions, which makes it much easier to read than the
highly literary style of most classical writers. Where there are important
differences between the Latin of the Bible stories and the standards of classical
Latin, you will find a note about that in the commentary.

If your Latin is kind of rusty...? If your
Latin is rusty, you might want to get a good Latin textbook to use as a reference,
so that when you come to a difficult grammatical point (for example, some
scary subjunctive verb), then you can review that in the textbook. I strongly
recommend against Wheelock. Instead, Moreland
and Fleischer's Latin: An Intensive Course is your best bet for
this purpose!

Latin dictionary. Having a good paperback
Latin dictionary is very helpful. I strongly recommend the The
Bantam New College Latin & English Dictionary. You should
also become familiar with how to use the Latin
Morphology Tool at Perseus. This allows you to quickly identify
the possible dictionary form(s) of any Latin word - which can sometimes be
kind of tricky - especially for verbs that look like nouns and vice versa!

Latin text. The Latin text is presented in
two different versions. The Bible version follows the standard
versification system found in the modern Bible. The segmented version
is designed to help you find the natural pauses, and also to quickly identify
the correct phrase and clause boundaries.

Reading out loud. The segmented text is designed
to assist you in reading out loud. With practice, you will learn to recognize
the important Latin words that help you mark the appropriate pauses and boundaries,
but this can take some time, especially if you are not used to reading Latin
out loud. Reading Latin out loud is the very best way to improve your
reading skills in general! So please read out loud: don't worry if
it drives your housemates crazy! It's worth it!

Suggested study guide. Go ahead and print
out the four different pages for each reading: Vulgate, segmented version,
commentary, and Douay-Rheims translation. After you have these versions ready
to go, here's what to do:

Segmented Latin with English. Start by
reading the segmented text side by side with the English
translation and the commentary. Read it very
carefully! Are there any words you need to look up? If so, look up the
words in a good Latin dictionary. Write down the dictionary form of
the Latin word, along with a brief English definition, on the segmented
text version - write the definitions way over in the right-hand margin
of the page (so you can cover them up later).
For help with the Latin,
look at the way the text is displayed on the screen when you select different
styles: direct speech in bold, verbs in bold, or verbs underlined with
direct speech in bold.

Segmented Latin with Commentary. Now,
put the English translation aside. Try reading the segmented
text version out loud. Read it out loud several times. You might consult
the commentary
if you want, and also look at the English definitions you wrote in the
margin, but try not to look at the English translation - if you need to
look at the English translation, go back to Step #1, and make good use
of your dictionary!
For help with the Latin, look at the way the text is displayed on the screen
when you select different styles: direct speech in bold,
verbs in bold, or verbs underlined with direct
speech in bold.

Segmented Latin only. Then, when you
are feeling more confident, put aside the commentary and use a blank piece
of paper to cover up the right-hand side of the Latin segmented version,
covering up any Latin-English definitions that you wrote there. Read slowly,
paying attention to the pauses. Do you understand what the Latin is saying?
For help with the Latin, look at the way the text is displayed on the
screen when you select different styles: direct speech in bold,
verbs in bold, or verbs underlined with direct
speech in bold.

Vulgate Latin. Now you are ready to put
aside the Latin segmented version and try the Latin Vulgate text,
where the breaks are based on the versification, and with no other punctuation
to help you pause. Read the Latin Bible version out loud, trying to pause
at the natural boundaries inside the verses. Can you find the natural pauses
inside the verses? Are you still able to understand the Latin? If there
are some Latin words you don't recognize, go back to your Latin segmented
version and circle the Latin-English words that you looked up which are
still causing you trouble. You can use those circled words as a vocabulary
review the next time you try reading the Latin Bible version.

Punctuation. You will quickly notice that
the Latin text has no punctuation. This is because the text of the Latin Bible
is traditionally printed without punctuation of any kind. And, of course,
this is a very good thing: Latin itself did not have punctuation! Any punctuation
in a text represents the intervention of a modern editor. If you learn to
read Latin without punctuation, you will get used to recognizing the verbal
punctuation which is so strongly marked in Latin, such as the postpositives
that mark the beginning of a new sentence (enim,
autem, and so on), and interrogative words that
mark the beginning of a question (num, nonne,
and so on).

Direct speech. Quotation marks are one kind
of punctuation that English readers find it very hard to live without! So,
if you want to quickly see where the direct speech start and stop in the Latin
text, just click on the red checkmark where it says "bold speech."
This will cause all the direct speech (the stuff that would normally be in
quotation marks) to appear in bold.

Verbs. In general, every Latin sentence contains
a verb. Verbs can be found anywhere in the sentence, because Latin word order
is entirely free. You will often find verbs at the end of a sentence, but
verbs come also come first, or in the middle. Being able to identity the verb
is extremely important. Some verbs might at first look like nouns to you,
and some nouns might look like verbs. For example, veniam
can be a noun or a verb, facies can be a noun or
a verb. You need to always be sure where your verbs are! In order to highlight
the verbs, just click on the red checkmark where it says "bold verbs."

Direct speech AND verbs. If you would like
a way to highlight both the direct speech AND the verbs in the Latin text,
you can click on the red checkmark where it says "bold speech + underline
verbs."

Latin commentary. You will find a brief commentary
on the Latin text, verse by verse, which highlights some important grammatical
points. This is not meant to be a commentary on the meaning of the text. You
can find many Bible commentaries online, at sites like Blue
Letter Bible or Crosswalk.com
along with many others.

English translation. The English translation
that is provided here is the Douay-Rheims, which is an English Bible translation
based on the Latin Bible rather than on the Hebrew or Greek Bibles. If you
are looking for an English text to "help" you read the Latin, this
is the best translation to use. Sometimes there are some radical differences
between the text of the Latin Bible and the Hebrew and Greek originals on
which it is based. You can get a sense of those differences by comparing the
Douay-Rheims translation to English translations which are instead based on
the original languages. Again, you can use the "Power Search" option
at the Unbound
Bible website in order to compare the Douay-Rheims to different
English translations.